WoW – More fun together!

Dear Totemless Shaman:

To that shaman and her friends who just bailed on me in dire maul for daring to suggest she should use totems, learn math.

Yes, yes, you were right, totems cost mana They cost it every pull! … well not. if you pick a good place for them then it is more like every other pull. Here is the thing.

If you throw stone skin people take less damage. That means… wait for it….. LESS HEALING NEEDED!

Yeah crazy huh? Yeah you can heal less and so you end up NOT being out of mana because it is a tradeoff.

Here is another shocker for you… if you don’t have to heal continuously (due to the totem armor effect) then you have some healing capacity in reserve for emergency… yeah, imagine that, wiping less, cool huh?

But WAIT… there is MORE!

If you throw dps buff totems fights take less time! And guess what that means…. wait for it… LESS HEALING NEEDED!

Crazy stuff, huh? I thought so. Also because things die fast there is less time for things to go wrong and people to die.

Even if it DID cost more mana to use them it would still make the run safer and faster.

If anyone out there things runs are better without using totems please punch yourself in the head and then stop playing a shaman. Or, instead, read what I wrote and go do a few runs WITH totems and see how much better they go.

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7 Responses

OH..my…I am sorry that you had to experience that! Totems are an integral part of the shaman…and anyone who refuses to use them needs a wake up call! Plus, mana stream totem gives a LOT more back than it did in the past; it is worth placing!

Totally in agreement. A Shaman without totems is like a hunter without a pet. Sure, you can do it, but why make it harder on yourself?

Granted I wear heirlooms, but I’ve found my 71 shaman to be mana efficient enough in groups from level 15 on to drop healing stream totem instead of mana spring. Oh and I jump for joy when I see a pally in group and I can get Blessing of Wisdom, which at lower levels is more effective IMO than Kings. Its win-win.

My favorite by far though is tremor totem. I wish my holy pally had something half as effective against fear.

Exactly. Heck about a quarter of pulls I don’t even need to heal if I drop a good set of totems and have Earth Shield applies. I can just be standing by for when something bad happens. Instead of healing all the time and having nothing left to give when that patrol hits us. And even if that was NOT the case why would I deny the party the buffs my totems provide to DPS?
I have decided the problem is that this takes more than one step of logic. So here it is layed out.

Even as an enhancement shaman I’m dropping totems that aren’t really even helping me, like cleansing totem and flametongue. Because they probably help someone out there. And since I play a healer as well, I know how nice it is to not have to cleanse between healing during healing intensive fights. Thanks totems! :P

Is it possible the problem is the group wanted to impose a go-go-go AoE everything pace to someone not comfortable healing at that pace?

If your group wiped and you blame it entirely on the shaman not dropping totems, then I am sorry but the dungeon leader was at fault for not providing the group with a safe margin of error in what is essentially easy content.

A recent example. My wife and I wiped twice in a 5-man Gnomer run a week ago because of the fast and furious pace the tank set put everyone out of position and the healer made some mistakes while trying to recover. Not what I would call major mistakes, just using his long cooldowns at the wrong time or failing to use them. Yeah, that was putting a lot of pressure of the poor healer. The tank left and we 4-man the rest with my wife tanking the rest of the instance as an enhancment shaman. We took it slow and we finished the dungeon with no additional deaths.

The wife and I can’t recall the last time we wiped in it in a 3-man (non-BoA) run, and that includes at least 10 runs.

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I don’t know what to think anymore.

On the one hand, your comics are very entertaining and your articles describing the basics of tanking are some of the best material available on the web (and as said before, I often direct new tanks to your site).

On the other hand, your vents about failed PuGs are not something I wish to recommend to new players (in the sense they have not read much, or anything, about their role in a group).